Shantell Martin

London-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist Shantell Martin has become one of the pioneers of a unique form of ambient, spontaneous, digital music-art interaction using light projection. Using live-painting and animation software, Martin projects on a surface, rapidly drawing and writing to the beat of live or recorded music, and using drawing software to repeat patterns, zoom in and out on the canvas, and make the illustrations spin and "dance." When an audience member steps up to the projector, Martin incorporates them into the drawing so they become living, dancing art. Martin's dazzling light projections have become wildly popular and she has performed live at festivals and venues in New York, St Petersburg, Tokyo, and Geneva. Recently, Martin performed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was featured on an episode of the hit show Gossip Girl, and was profiled by CNN, which wrote that she "mesmerized crowds by using a tablet to draw real-time projection art that interacted with the audience in time with the music."

Martin is a graduate of the prestigious Central St. Martins School of Art and also works as a freelance illustrator. She now leads interactive workshops on digital painting creativity around the world.

Workshop: Drawing + Code

This workshop will investigate the curious space where drawing and computation meet. From the earliest moments of the computer - Douglas Englebart's mouse, Ivan Sutherland's sketchpad - developers have been striving for intuitive and meaningful ways to capture and explore gesture digitally. Likewise artists - From Durer's drawing machine, to Sol Lewitt's infinite cubes and Moholy Nagy's imaginary structures - have used computational method to transfer reality on to the paper and generatively reproduce elements of their drawing. In this workshop we will examine the fundamentals and challenges of mixing computation and drawing, in order to create a new realm of possibilities. We'll would cover building drawing tools and using them for creative exploration and performance.

Shantell and Zach will be collaborating a series of small tools for mixing computation and drawing, tools for both creative sketching and live performance, and the workshop will focus on exploring these tools -- using them to make drawings and artworks, as well as studying the codebase for computational approaches to gesture.

We are open to students of all skill levels. Students should bring their laptops, and have openFrameworks installed if they'd like to follow the code discussion.

Session: Digital Drawing as a Performance

An introduction and explanation of the origin of my use of digital drawing as a performance tool in collaboration with music and a look at the simple drawn line and the ideology behind it.

When we think about data representation, we often think inside the boundaries of print and screen-based communication. But, what about performance? Panelists will discuss their experiences with incorporating data into performative acts, both musical and theatrical.